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Toronto man leads winning Vanderbilt bridge tournament team

Talk bridge to almost anyone short of retirement age and watch their eyes glaze over.

But beyond the stereotype, bridge is a test of wits and strategy among the best in the world — more challenging than chess, as gruelling and serious as a poker tournament.

“Marriages break up over bridge. People give up their business just to play bridge,” says Leslie Amoils, the Toronto captain of a six-man team which won the Vanderbilt Trophy this past weekend.

The Vanderbilt is to bridge what the Green Jacket is to the Masters. And in Memphis, Tenn., the teams vying for the honour weren’t entirely of the expected demographic.

“They talk about the young guns of bridge — I’m likely the oldest guy on my team,” 54-year-old Amoils says. “The best players today are the younger players, and that never used to be the case.”

The American Contract Bridge League’s Vanderbilt Knockout Teams national bridge championship is an open tournament that sees the best in the world advance through brackets during the seven-day event.

It’s the lesser known March Madness, and it gets pretty serious. Once a match starts, if a player has to go to the bathroom, an official or opponent goes along to prevent cheating. At the tables, screens are set up so you can’t read cues from your partner’s face.

Amoils grew up in South Africa and moved to Canada in 1990, where he owns an auction company. His bridge team is made up of five men from around the world, including an American rocket scientist, and Darren Wolpert, a 37-year-old Toronto investment adviser who has been playing since he was a teenager.

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In the final nerve-wracking match, Amoils’ team beat a squad of Americans and Canadians they were friends with.

“That’s not always the case. There are teams that play with a lot of animosity, who don’t like each other,” Amoils said.

When the final score came in — 138 to 88 — Amoils’ team “went crazy” in the way bridge players do. Appropriately, so as not to hurt the feelings of the other team. Then everyone went to the bar.

“It cost me a lot of money, I’ll put it that way,” Amoils said.

There is no prize money with the Vanderbilt — only prestige and a replica of the silver cup.

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Amoils knows what it’s like to be heartbroken at the Vanderbilt. A Cinderella run brought the team to the finals last year, but they lost in the last couple of hands.

He is not a professional bridge player — bridge is a hobby, which made the win that much better. Amoils and Wolpert will make a run at the Canadian Bridge Championships in late April, and hope to play at the World Championships after that.

In South Africa, Amoils taught himself the card game in his early 20s, and became so good he made the national team. In the army at the time, he became a minor celebrity because of his status, even if few understood what bridge was about.

Wolpert picked up bridge at 16 because his entire family played. He credits his mom, who he calls a very good player, with teaching him the game.

Every weekend, Wolpert and Amoils get together for six or seven hours and practise. In addition to tournaments, they sometimes play at Hazel’s Bridge Club, operated by Wolpert’s mother in North York.

Wolpert says bridge is about “having good agreements, and knowing how your partner is going to play.”

“Out of all the mind games, so to speak, it’s the most complicated and toughest,” Amoils says. “I used to refer to it as chess squared.”

To the uninitiated, it’s a foreign language.

In Canada, it’s traditionally been a tough sell to younger generations because it has “developed a bit of a reputation as an old person’s game” says Janice Anderson of the Canadian Bridge Federation.

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While school programs exist in Ottawa and the East Coast, and there are younger players, the game doesn’t have the same appeal among the younger demographic as it does in Europe.

Despite that, bridge has friends in high places. In addition to the legions who show up for a game at community centres around the world, business magnate Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates count themselves fans.

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